Facts are one thing, motives another. A historian can get lucky and tap into historical actors’ underlying aspirations and goals through revelatory memoirs, biographies, interviews or emails/letters, but in the nuclear field, opacity quickly came to be the prevalent stance. When the only historical documents are official reports, speeches, cautious meeting minutes, or newspaper articles, the spin. . .
In England, the national policy tension between mastering nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors, and ballooning costs, was to preoccupy politicians and public servants from the 1960s, but I enjoyed finding an early sign of concern. The British triumvirate of Christopher Hinton, John Cockcroft, and William Penney was nigh impossible to subject to budgetary control, but on January 26, 1954, private. . .
The mythology of Rickover presents dark and light sides, an instance of the latter fascinating me in this pithy aside from biographers Norman Polmar and Thomas Allen: Rickover even put on a uniform for Time. Refreshingly, the Admiral hated kitting up (he hated much about the Navy he served). Of course his alternative dress was standard fifties suit and tie, but his dislike of pomp endears him to. . .
On December 2 falls the 75th anniversary of the very first nuclear reactor, CP-1 at the University of Chicago. A couple of days ago, the university posted a write-up of the momentous event by Michael Drapa. This event is close to my heart and I greatly enjoyed revisiting the drama, both in the post and in an embedded four-and-a-half-minute video narrated with great verve by Rachel Bronson. . .
Hyman Rickover was a larger-than-life (if elf-sized) character in the early history of nuclear reactors, and I feature him in the book. But I can’t include every Rickover drama – there were too many! Engineer Salomon Levy worked for General Electric in the 50s. GE’s nuclear laboratory, government-funded Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, was building an experimental submarine. . .
“What’s your book about?” I’m asked. “The history of nuclear power reactors,” I answer, or at least I used to answer. These days I might not even admit to being a writer. I enjoy debating the history I explore but the trouble is, nearly everyone ignores the word “history” and responds in one of two ways. Pro-nuclear advocates clamour for this. . .
Mikhail Gorbachev features only briefly in my narrative but he looms as large across the canvas of the Cold War as any other human being. Just released, William Taubman’s biography, Gorbachev: His Life and Times, is a tour de force. Taubman is the go-to biographer of Nikita Khrushchev, now I have no hesitation in recommending his Gorbachev rendering. Not only is it comprehensive and. . .
Early 1949, four years after the end of the World War, seven years after the first reactor went live. Atomic energy is locked behind barbed wires – it’s for making bombs. American utilities – the private or public firms that generate electricity for ordinary Americans – are naturally fascinated by the prospect of harnessing this new technology, but they know little more. . .
It’s the winter of 1954 and Walter Zinn at Argonne is, among other things, inventing the boiling water reactor, which will eventually be the second most popular around the world. As usual, he’s doing it on a shoestring, or more precisely, one of his favourite offsiders, Harold “Butch” Lichtenberger, is building it. Here’s Norman Hilberry, Zinn’s 2IC, writing to Lichtenberger: Dear Harold, Wally. . .
Mecklin’s Reuters article is essential reading. My research on North Korea’s attainment of nuke capability fully supports Mecklin’s thesis that the so-called crisis is “a media puppet show put on by Chairman Kim and President Trump for their own public relations purposes.”